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I spent a good portion of the day yesterday sneezing, but was certain that I was in the early stages of seasonal allergies. “Woohoo! Spring!” I thought initially. Around mid-morning, my left nostril shut down while the right one went into overdrive to ensure that I had a steady stream of clear, watery snot. At that point, the first seed of doubt began to sprout in my brain, but I pushed it away.

“I’m cool. I just have allergies. I’m fine. I’m not getting a cold. I just have to stand in the middle of my office and forget what I was going to do while letting a Kleenex hang out of my nose. It’s my process.”

After dinner, I could feel my head start to feel like dough and finally admitted defeat. “I have a cold. Dammit,” I said. Only it sounded more like, “I hab a code. Dammid.” I was also coming to terms with the fact that I definitely had a stye in my right eyelid. I stood in the middle of my bedroom half-naked, having deliriously removed my pants at some point, and declared, “This sucks.” The combination of ailments made me feel as sexy as when I initially hurt my neck and had to adopt my Nosferatu posture.

This morning at the school bus stop, I was approached by one of the usual characters that I encounter from time to time in my neighborhood. This time it was the minimally-toothed, lisping lady who warned me of the used condom nearby.

Today there were no neighborhood watch emergencies. Instead she asked me if I had a fresh Kleenex, or “Kleeneksh,” as she calls them. Thoroughly out of it and breathing out of my mouth, I started to hand her the Kleenex that I had in my hand. “Well, I have this one, but I’ve been using it and so it has a little snot on it,” I said. She looked at the Kleenex, looked at me and, I swear to dog, backed away slowly.

“Sho, that’sh a no,” she said, reaching my conclusion for me since I was obviously in no shape for rational thought.

“Um, yeah, I guess so,” I replied.

“Becaushe we don’t want to shpread germsh around!” she called out over her shoulder, before wiping her nose on her sleeve.

My nose may be leaking and my eye may be swollen, but I can out-crazy the crazy lady when I really put my mind to it.

I’m ripping that post title off of JiveTurkey because this is really just a list of stuff I want more of and stuff I’m sick of. Let’s start with the negativity because that’s my favorite part.

I have had enough of:

• Statements about Whitney Houston and addiction. I know her death was untimely. I know addiction is serious. I’m just so, “Oh…bummer,” about her death. People lead messed up lives, they’re taken advantage of, and then they die in the tub. Alone. Just like all the rest of us.
• Chris Brown and the cloud of bullshit that comes with him. I don’t know what the answer is when it comes to talented people who are also piece-of-shit human beings. I do know that responding to the women who tweeted appalling requests after his Grammy appearance with, “They get what’s coming to them,” or “Someone should beat them so they know better,” is pretty vile.
• “Kids these days” whining. They wear their pants too low. They listen to terrible music. They don’t know who Paul McCartney is. Yeah, you know what that makes you? A cranky old person set in their ways and the reason why no substantive changes ever happen. Shut up.
• Valentine’s Day hype. “Wah, I’m single and this day is so hard for me,” or “Please validate my relationship by gushing over the gifts that my significant other gave to me.” It’s just a day. Do it or don’t.
• Communities on the internet and, obviously, the internet in general. I think at some point I may have been concerned about the dynamics of any given group of people on the internet, but that’s not the case anymore. It’s just one facet of life. If people are being jerks to you, disengage.
• This dress is a little too small on me at the moment. I’m wearing it today and the buttons are working kind of hard. I’m really ready to get back to a normal level of activity. Speaking of which…

Cheers:

• My neck is definitely getting better. This morning I was able to put my left ear close(r) to my shoulder, which I wasn’t able to do even yesterday! (Note: I started writing this post yesterday, so that fact might be relevant when considering the jeers section.) And I thinkthe numbness in my fingers is pretty much gone. I definitely still have issues with stiffness and tightness and pain, but measurable signs of recovery are so exciting. Check out this exciting physical therapy action shot!
  

  No, that's not a booger. That's my nosering.

• The husband and the baby. I really do just love the crap out of both of those guys. Despite my aforementioned annoyed indifference toward Valentine’s Day, we had a sweet time last night getting ready for the baby’s festivities at school. He signed his Valentines while I worked my crafty magic into a Valentines box in a swirl of Spongebob wrapping paper, box cutters, pipe cleaner, and ribbon.
  

  Hold on a sec, Martha's calling me.

• The husband had another Pittsburgh Track Authority performance at Belvedere’s on Saturday and it went really, really well. Again, about 300 people showed up to hear them and the headliner, Kirk DeGeorgio, and it was really cool to see so many people dancing for them. I’m so proud of him and them. I think something big might be brewing for them.
  

  Mine's on the left. Aren't they cute? All squished together and wondering what the hell they're doing? *

• Once again, I done brought the bake sale vibe to this performance and made brownies, which everyone assumed had drugs in them. (They did not.) Both were recipes from blogs that I read that I had pinned to Pinterest. They were Peanut Butter and Fleur de Sel Brownies and Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies.
• Along those lines, I’m finding that Pinterest is much more useful than I thought it would be when I first started using it. I do, however, need to start a board called, “Stuff I Tried from Pinterest that SUCKED,” because there have been a few duds.
• Completely unrelated, the phrase, “Where’s Wallace?” has been a common refrain in our house and circle of friends, even though the scene from The Wire that it originated from first aired like 10 years ago.

It’s all very serious and intense, but then we got a Steeler named Mike Wallace. Whenever he does something good, the refrain, “WHERE’S WALLACE?” or “WHERE WALLACE AT?” goes flying. Imagine my glee when I came across this children’s book the other day:I have now redefined my life goals and am going to become a preschool teacher so I can read this to my young charges. What could be more adorable than a bunch of 4-year-olds saying, “STRING?!?! STRING! LOOK AT ME!?”

*PTA image source

I’m not, by nature, a violent person. At least I don’t think so. I used to describe myself as having a short temper. But I think that was a combination of two things: my admittedly bad habit of getting irritated too easily and my tendency in my earlier days to bother having an opinion or caring about stuff that wasn’t actually worth the effort. I’ve gotten physical a few times. One time that stands out is when I was about 10 and at a high school reunion picnic with my parents. Some kid was harassing me and the other kids I was playing with. I became furious. I pushed him. He pushed back. He won. I got gravel embedded under the skin of my palms, which hurt like hell.

Most of the time, if I’m angry about something, I’ll rant about wanting to sock someone, and maybe in the moment I do. But I know that it’s not really worth whatever consequences would follow.

My thought process was not as logical this past Friday night.

I was out to see the husband’s band and a few DJs and I was, admittedly, intoxicated. I was, however, behaving and just generally having a good time, and tweeting things like:

Just don't ask me to explain any of these.

At one point, however, some guy who was not holding himself together, stumbled through the crowd and was dragging another inebriate, who was dragging a bar stool. This choo-choo train of fail ran right into me, knocking me down and trampling me a bit. My memory of this event is fuzzy, but my sister-in-law tells me that I stood up and thrust two middle fingers in the air. I then approached the guy who ran into me and talked to him for a bit in what I’m sure was an enlightening conversation. I then removed his glasses, set them on the table next to him, and slapped him across the face.

Photographers were on hand to capture my self-image

There was no retaliation on his part or on the part of his companions. Probably because I was nice enough to spare his glasses. I wear glasses. I know they’re expensive. If I had a slap coming, I would want to make sure my glasses wouldn’t get bent.

I’m really thankful that it didn’t escalate. Obviously because I wouldn’t want to test out whether or not I had any actual fighting skills but also because people starting fights at bars is so cliche and trashy. But I’m mostly just really…impressed? surprised? with myself that I got up the guts to do such a thing when the situation really called for it.

That said, I’m pretty sure I’m hanging up my gloves.

I did something kind of dumb a few weeks ago. As I mentioned the other day, I got a new iPhone. I initially went to buy it after having brunch with Laurie, Kim, and Jessica. I walked into the Apple Store with a small list of questions having to do with the fact that my laptop was from several OSes ago and could no longer support newer versions of iTunes and therefore could not update newer versions of iOS. This wasn’t a huge problem, since iPhones now have cloud storage, but the only thing to consider was that I would have trouble transferring images and contacts and stuff from old phone to new.

If you’ve been to an Apple Store, you know that everyone who is working there during your visit (all 50 of them), are extremely friendly and personable and have drunk enough of the Apple Kool-Aid that they’re JUST SO HAPPY FOR YOU THAT YOU’RE BUYING AN APPLE PRODUCT. The college student that I ended up oddly attached to was nice and kind and seemed to genuinely like me. And I’m not sure what happened, but I eventually heard myself saying, “I’ll take a MacBook Pro, please.”

The next 20 or so minutes were a blur of credit cards and rebates and Cloud set ups. I walked out of the store with a new laptop and a free-after-rebate printer in my hands. And I was pretty happy about my purchases until the fumes from the store wore off. Then I began to wonder if I’d acted foolishly.

I did want a new a laptop, though I wouldn’t have gone so far to claim that I needed one. But the one thing that I knew for certain was that I couldn’t afford one. I had, as I said, put it on a credit card, which wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world if it wasn’t the credit card that had been the bane of my existence since I got it as a wee college senior. Its interest rate was too high and the balance had been circling the same embarrassingly high amount for years. I would pay a chunk off and then something would happen and I would need funds that I didn’t have and out it would come. But for the most part, I had protected it from big impulse purchases.

When I got home, however, the majority of my brain was still excited about my new toy. The husband looked at my haul, puzzled. “Uh, why did you buy that?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer besides, “I just really wanted it.”

We didn’t argue and the husband didn’t try to make me feel bad, but I quickly began to feel ashamed of myself for doing something so impulsive and selfish and financially reckless.

I kept the laptop in its box and over the next few days tried to determine whether or not I could really afford the payments that I would be making and trying to deal with the fact that I had essentially put myself back a whole year in paying down that card. Eventually, I realized what I needed to do.

On Saturday, I went to a different Apple Store than the one where I had purchased the laptop. I didn’t want to risk seeing my buddy from the big purchase. The face of the Genius who helped me fell when I told her the reason for my visit. She seemed personally hurt and sad that I would return such a wonderful thing. And I’d be lying if I said that a tiny part of me didn’t hope that there would some reason that they would say that they couldn’t accept the return, that I would be forced (or “forced”) to keep the shiny pretty thing. But eventually I walked out of there, empty-handed but with the promise of a thousand-dollar bad idea soon to be erased.

I’m thankful for my impulses, for whatever it is that tells me to go for it. Those impulses got me a partner that I can’t imagine my life without and a son who makes the world a little bit better every day. They got me a house that surely does it what it can to drive me crazy, but that I can tell is going to be a center for us and my kid and his kids for years to come. They certainly give me some headaches, like when they drive me to make major purchases without really thinking them through. But if I don’t do that sometimes, I don’t get the opportunity to remind myself that I’m pretty good about fixing my mistakes.

Early this morning, I was awakened by Florian the Kitten, who discovered his ability to walk on the baby’s keyboard, thereby turning it on and playing a few notes. I was pleased that a musically inclined psychopath had not broken in and that at least one of the beings in our household will willingly practice piano. (The baby remains convinced that he can learn piano by just sitting in the same room as the instrument.)

That event out of the way, I took a moment to say, “I’m 33. I’m 33. I’m 33.” Because that is the age that I am as of this morning.

I then came to the unfortunate realization that my birthday present from Mother Nature was cramps. Thanks, Mother Nature. A someecard would have sufficed.

That gift meant that I responded to many happy birthday wishes this morning with a wan face and a withering smile. I went to a quick Pilates class though and it really helped, if for no other reason than the fact that we ended by laying on the floor in the fetal position, which is exactly what I needed to do.

I’m wearing a very cute dress that my grandmother gave me on Saturday. It’s from Anthropologie, or Apologetic as she calls it, because she does not like calling things by their actual names. (See also: my old boyfriend Clint, who she called Elwood, or the shop Divertido in Lawrenceville, which she calls Deuteronomy, or my buddy Frank, who she calls Stush.)

Pardon the bathroom picture. We don't have any full-length mirrors at home.

I finally managed to snap a picture of the little maniacal furball in our house.

As Sara noted, he looks very genteel, but looks can be deceiving. He’s either up and running all over the place or passed out, and he doesn’t pass out before going through an elaborate settling in ritual that usually results in bodily harm. Or rather, harm to my bodily.

When he snuggles, he’s heavenly. But he’ll attack me via flying leap and I have scratch marks all over me. I’m too embarrassed to admit that I’m getting regular beatings from a 3-pound kitten, so I’ve just been telling everyone that I’ve been in a knife fight.

We had another busy weekend, so I decided to take the day off of work on Friday to hang out with the dudes, since the baby didn’t have school. We mostly chilled out all day but did manage to check out the Alex Ross exhibit at The Warhol, which was just so, so rad. You should go.

However, I realized on Sunday night that I probably should have taken Monday off instead, since the husband and I had to be out really late. The husband and two of his friends started this…musical group? Band? I’ve also seen the term production trio thrown about. I’m not sure what to call them. But it’s the three of them and a bunch of synthesizers and keyboards and doohickeys and whatnot and they make dance music. They call themselves Pittsburgh Track Authority and things have really taken off for them in the past couple of months, with their tracks getting signed for release by dance music labels. Here’s one of their most recent compositions:

They had their debut live performance on Sunday at the Shadow Lounge as part of the VIA festival wrap-up party. They were all pretty nervous about it in the weeks leading up to it, since it was a week after the main festival and on a Sunday night.

As it turned out, a TON of people showed up and I don’t think I’m biased in saying that PTA’s performance was the highlight of an all-around fantastic evening. They were preceded by Smooth Tutors and ELQ and followed by Dam Funk. People were dancing the whole time, but seemed to really get into it for PTA. I was so, so impressed with their music and was so incredibly proud of the husband for getting to experience that after so much hard work and so many setbacks. Plus, you know, it’s always exciting to get a post-performance kiss from the hot guy on stage. 😉

Since I knew we were going to be out so late, I had to get lunches ready for me and the baby and decided to bake some cookies while I was at it. I made a batch of Martha Stewart’s pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing (going to write about them for Foodie Parent tomorrow) and toted some of them to the show in my uber-housewife covered pan/container thing that I got from The Cake Pan Lady. Frank, who was in town for the show, cracked up at me bringing treats to the dance music show, like, “Here boys! Brought you some goodies! Have a good electronic music performance! Make sure you use the potty beforehand!” It might have seemed absurd but let me tell you those cookies were gone by the end of the night, devoured by the performers and various attendees with much groaning in delight.

About five years ago, the three of us got the urge to add a pet to our family. We wanted a dog, but realized that we weren’t really the best family for one. We’re gone a lot of the time and wouldn’t be able to give a dog the attention and maintenance that it needs. So we decided to get a cat. I was skeptical, because I’ve never particularly liked cats. But we adopted Greedo and he’s been a beloved member of our household ever since.

The past couple of months, the husband and I talked about maybe getting a kitten, but were very hesitant because we didn’t want to change the household dynamics or Greedo’s wonderful personality. But on Friday, I absentmindedly followed a link to PetFinder from a friend on Twitter and started poking around at the cats up for adoption just to pass my time on my lunch break. I came across a boy kitten, only 10 weeks old, who looked like what we imagined Greedo would have looked like when he was just a wee thing.

I informed the husband that we would need to go to the Humane Society cat adoption at the PetSmart in the North Hills after work.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because that’s where the kitten is,” I said.

“What kitten?”

“Our kitten. That we’re getting. Tonight.”

The husband was resistant, sure that Greedo would be traumatized. However, when he got to hold our kitten for the first time, a grin full of defeat spread across his face.

We took him to my mother-in-law’s house first so everyone there could see him and delighted in watching this fuzzball of energy bound around the room, curious about everything and purring constantly. My mom brought the baby there after his piano lesson and I got the extremely cool experience of surprising my kid with a new pet.

When we took the kitten home, Greedo was not excited. There was some hissing and some big tails before we isolated the kitten in the bathroom per the shelter’s instructions. The husband was being all doomy and declared that they would never get along and the kitten would have to go back. The baby started crying, agreeing with the husband’s assessment. “Look, guys. They’ve only known each other five minutes. They just have to get used to each other.”

We didn’t get to play with the new kitten that much during his first few days home. Friday and Saturday nights we were out at the VIA festival, not getting home until the very wee hours of the morning and having to get up at 8:30 for soccer both days.

Saturday afternoon, I had to take a nap if I was going to make it through another night of music and another early morning soccer game, and took the kitten into the spare room with me so that he could be isolated from Greedo but not cooped up and lonely. I woke up from a delicious nap to find the kitten snuggled up against me. He felt me stir and nuzzled into my neck, tickling me a little bit and just generally melting my heart.

“Greedo is going to have to get over his hang-ups about the kitten because I’m pretty sure we just bonded,” I declared.

Once Greedo had an opportunity to watch the ridiculous antics of the kitten as he hopped sideways and zoomed on tiny legs and jumped from tall heights with little to no regard for his physical well-being, he seemed to appreciate how entertaining the kitten was and began to slowly warm up. Which is good, because I’m in love.

He’s named Florian after one of the members of Kraftwerk. Don’t you think of 1970s proto-techno German electronic music when you see kittens?

I’m really not exaggerating when I say that practically every weekday morning comes with some event, large or small, that makes me think that I must be on The Truman Show or something. Usually it’s absurd traffic jams or the school bus company failing at their raison d’etre. But occasionally things will happen like my elderly neighbor will wander outside on a frigid winter morning or something else equally notable.

On Wednesday, the baby and I made our way to the bus stop, still reveling in the recent switch to a new bus company that does these crazy things like “show up” and “transport children to school before 10 a.m.” We noticed a news van and a group of people gathered on the corner, plus some police cars. I asked another mom at the bus stop what was going on. “Um, apparently there’s a hostage situation,” she said.

Uh. What?

She, of course, was sketchy on the details but heard that there had been some kind of domestic dispute and the husband was supposedly holed up in the house with some weapons.

This obviously worried me, since there was a SWAT team present. Were there other people in the house? Was the situation going to go nuclear before I could put my kid safely on the bus and hightail it back to my house? Was I a total idiot for staying there regardless?

The situation ended up being resolved several hours later in a most ridiculous fashion. After the wife had initially left the house, the husband, probably realizing that the police would be coming, left as well. So the police and the SWAT team were standing outside, shouting surrender orders through a bullhorn, firing tear gas and flash bang grenades. We got to hear one of those flash bangs go off, which was super startling and prompted me to get my “INCOMING!” duck and cover ready to go. They also sent in a robot to suss out the situation, after which point the family dog finally surrendered to police. The police finally called the guy on his cell phone and found out that he was two blocks away.

Now, obviously, he needed to be arrested on the domestic violence charge. It’s also possible that he’ll face firearm charges since they found several guns in the home, including an AK-47.

Ice Cube on a good day, during which he did not have to employ his AK-47

It’s not shocking to me that people possess illegal firearms and that those firearms are hopefully way more gun than they need. But it really freaks me out that this guy had a small arsenal and lives just a few steps away from a preschool. Not that there would be any good place for him to live with such things, other than in a cabin that he built himself somewhere in the woods.

My stance on guns and gun control has evolved over the years. I used to be firmly anti-gun, supported all strict gun control measures, and would have gladly supported any candidate proposing to ban them altogether. But I came to understand many people’s justification for owning them, whether or not I agreed with them. I’ve remained a supporter of gun control measures though. There will always be underground methods for obtaining any item. That shouldn’t stop us as a society from regulating how they’re traded above ground.

I just really have not met anyone who has felt that they really REALLY needed a gun outside of hunting who wasn’t a) kind of an idiot about it or b) up to some dirty business. Like the friends who live waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere and own guns to protect their home from crackheads. I mean, I don’t know why a crackhead is out in the woods but maybe you need to move to, like, a populated area so you’re not defending yourself on your own. And, yes, there are shooting sprees and attacks and all of these things, but unless you’re actively training to respond to such a situation often, you’re probably not going to save the day just because you have a concealed weapons permit.

After our house was broken into, we did the inevitable mental circus of “what-if” scenarios. We were extremely freaked out that the burglar had entered our home while we there, asleep, and were just so, so thankful that he was only there to steal things and not interested in hurting anyone. I really and truly don’t care about my things and even if the dude had announced that he was going to be taking every last thing in my home, I would have let him with the understanding that he not lay a finger on any of us. I have insurance, you know? Plus, more importantly, stuff is just stuff and neither a single thing in my home nor my pride is worth any bodily harm to me or my family. But we did wonder about what if it had been a break-in with the intent of doing harm to us. How would we have defended ourselves? The truth is, I don’t know. And we did seriously considering purchasing a gun. But I just couldn’t bring myself to be okay with it. I didn’t want a gun in my house. I didn’t want to constantly think about the fact that my family and I, like everyone else in the world, am just one (statistically unlikely) coincidence away from some horrible fate.

Unless that guy in my neighborhood was about to start a revolution but had to beat his wife first, which seems somewhat improbable, he was just some sociopathic jackass who thought he was bad enough to need an assault rifle.

One thing that my brain keeps having a hard time wrapping itself around, much like a stripper on her first night on the pole, is that there won’t come a moment where I just feel like an adult from that point on.

I’ve been working a lot this year on mindfulness. That is, being present in what I’m doing at the moment instead of constantly living for some future life that I think I need to achieve that may or may not come to fruition, regardless of my efforts. On the one hand, it motivates me to push myself further. On the other, much uglier hand, it causes me stress and anxiety that is later followed by deep regret. (ie, If we had known that pursuing more education would not only not help our financial situation but actively make it waaaaay worse, the husband and I would have just enjoyed life, spent more time with the baby and UGH HERE I GO AGAIN FRETTING ABOUT STUFF I CAN’T CHANGE FAAACK.)

I also do this thing where if I have a bad day or a bad week, to me it’s not just one of those things that happens, it’s indicative of how I’m not an adult, how I’ve never matured to a point where I can just take care of myself and my family, how I’m too stupid and irresponsible to do what I need to do to not have a frantic period of time.

This morning, for example, I woke up and looked at my phone for a second. My iPhone is my alarm clock and I usually hit the “snooze” button a few times before waking up for real. And I usually take a few minutes to look at my email or something, not because I’m sooo important or sooo addicted to email, but getting my brain engaged helps me to actually wake up and get moving.

This morning, however, I looked at my email and then fell asleep again at some point. (I apparently engaged in some sleep-emailing, which is like drunk-texting but dumber, as I forwarded an ad about Barnes & Noble’s Columbus Day sale to some very confused person in my contacts list. Sorry if that was you.) I only woke up a little bit later, around the time when we should have been leaving the house to go to the baby’s bus stop. To my credit, I stayed relatively calm when, in my less graceful days, I might have started yelling at the baby and the husband to GET MOVING RIGHT FUCKING NOW OH MY GOD WHHYYYYYYY IS THIS HAPPENING BEING LATE IS THE WORST CRIME OF HUMANITY AND WE’RE ALL GUILTY.

Despite my calm exterior, however, I spent the rest of the morning engaged in an intense self-flagellation-by-inner-monologue session, belittling myself for not being like a real grown-up and not only getting up early, but going to bed at a decent hour so I can get enough sleep. I also don’t regularly prepare for my mornings by getting stuff like lunches and clothes ready to go the night before because I always reach this point in the evening where I just need the day to be over and I think about basically starting the next day already and it makes me want to cry and write run-on sentences.

I’m also dealing with a lot of bills and student loan matters right now that I feel absolutely powerless to control and I want so badly to be able to hand the whole matter over to someone and be like, “Deal with and/or pay these for me.”

And I say to myself, “Real adults get enough sleep, pay their bills on time, don’t have a ton of debt, get up early, exercise, have lunches and coffee ready to go, don’t make their kids late for school, never have dirty hair, dress appropriately, and they might be tired but they suck it up and do what they have to do, and YOU are not an adult until you do all of these things every day.”

I’ll have a streak of a few days where all of these things fall into place, but then something will knock me slightly off kilter and it all seems to fall apart. And I don’t understand why I can’t just MAKE it happen.

Normally, I like my Sundays to consist of sleeping, eating, and watching movies and football. This past Sunday was nearly the opposite of that.

I got up at what we here on the internet like to call o’dark-thirty and went to Oakland to participate in the Great Race 5k. This was kind of a big deal for me, because it was my first “real” race. The Race for the Cure was fun and it was a good experience, but I couldn’t do much running. This time, people were actually there to race and while it was still a fun atmosphere, I could tell that there was more intensity in the air.

I got kind of nervous the night before and considered backing out, but by the time I got to the starting line and had time to stretch and warm up, I felt ready to go. I had whipped together a playlist on the shuttle to the start and it ended up being totally perfect.

When the starting gun went off, there was the initial stutter of everyone trying to go, but it cleared out pretty quickly and we were off.

I was surprised at how good I felt. The first jog I had done since injuring my toe had left my legs feeling kind of crampy, perhaps from favoring my left leg, and I was worried that I would have more of the same. But my legs felt fine. My only real discomfort came from the long-sleeved shirts that we were issued, which felt good at the beginning but oppressive about halfway through.

I walked for a bit near Duquesne, deciding not to wear myself out on the small hill, and a few more times for a few seconds while drinking some water.

I pulled into Point State Park at around 38:28 and I was pretty pleased with myself and my time. I was surprised to find myself feeling pretty emotional, even tearing up for a second. I started jogging kind of on a whim over a year and a half ago, because I needed to do something about my physical and mental health. Jogging led to a slow revamping of my diet, which led to a rekindling in my interests in yoga and Pilates. The cool thing is that I consider more challenges and don’t get discouraged because I won’t be the best at them, but excited because I can just go and DO them. All of this is to say that I might be doing some rather foolish things over the next six months or so.

That's my "I'm about 10 minutes away from a caffeine headache," look.

Crazily enough, the Great Race was the first of several big items on my to-do list for Sunday. I still needed to get coffee (see: aforementioned impending caffeine headache), get the baby’s soccer pictures taken, watch the baby’s soccer game, send the baby off with my dad to the Pirates game, do something with the 5 pounds of chicken in my fridge that were thisclose to going bad (ended up making the most massive batch of chicken noodle soup), wrap the husband’s birthday gifts, go to the mother-in-law’s house for the husband’s birthday party with the totally awesome birthday cake in tow, birthday it up, watch the Steelers game, watch Boardwalk Empire.

The baby’s soccer game went really well. He scored what ended up being the game-winning goal and did a really great victory run. There are a lot of things that are really cool about being that kid’s mom. One of the coolest is seeing things start to click into place for him. Score soccer goals? Totally doable. Play Beatles songs on the piano? Got it, though there will be some angst first. Learn Spanish? On it. Understand math? Please. Read books and start to realize that they’re more than just words on a page? That the stories are there to help you understand the world and your place in it? Obviously!

He’s going to be 10 soon. Last night, after some bickering escalated into shouting on my part, I took awhile to cool off. Later, I asked him to come sit with me for a bit and he let me hug him for a long time as I apologized for yelling the way I did and saying mean things (and then “reminded” him that he owed me an apology, too, for being a jerk in the first place). I looked out of the corner of my eye at his head resting on my shoulder, his cute little ear poking up. It used to look just that way when he was a baby, too.